Editing Encyclopedia:MediaWiki FAQ (section)

== Why are we using MySQL as a database, not PostgreSQL? ==

I'll stick to the MySQL version for now, since I have barely the time to maintain that one alone right now. Once it is up, and has no real bugs anymore, I could try PostgreSQL at a test site and convert it if it is really faster. --[[user:Magnus Manske|Magnus Manske]]

If the app. relies much on any complex joins, than PostgreSQL will probably be able to outperform MySQL. If it's mostly simple selects from a single table, than probably not. But as the number of users increases, PostgreSQL handles locking issues much better through its Multi-Version Concurrency Control, which is essentially better than row-level locking. So if you get the chance and time permits, I think it would be worthwhile to give PostgreSQL a try. --[[User:Wesley|Wesley]]

It's not always just about "which is better."  There are those of us who are already running web app servers with PostgreSQL and don't want to (or can't) maintain another RDBMS just to make one app happy.  Anyway, PostgreSQL support is supposed to be almost fully working now.  I'm about to find out... -- cwilkins@boinklabs.com